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European lawmakers approved tougher regulation of the the derivatives market, raising concern among traders that changes would hinder systems used by NYSE Euronext, Deutsche Boerse and other exchanges. However, the rules would not require exchange-listed derivatives to be centrally cleared. The move "preserves the vertical clearing model that currently exists in the futures markets," said Richard Repetto of Sandler O'Neill + Partners.

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In late 2009, CME Group launched credit default swaps clearing, which was backed up by its futures and options default fund. CME is creating a separate default fund for CDS clearing. "We will be relaunching our CDS clearing solution using a separate default-fund structure," said Laurent Paulhac, CME's head of over-the-counter products and services. "It has been a learning process; originally we thought there would be more benefits and efficiencies by putting it all together."

Goldman Sachs Group and Morgan Stanley raised their forecasts for the price of oil, predicting that Brent crude will reach $120 a barrel this year. The predictions surprised market observers and raised concern about the amount of influence major financial institutions have over the oil market.

Jill Sommers, a member of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, said the U.S. and the EU are moving at different paces in writing regulations for the $600 trillion global swaps market. "I believe a material difference in the timing of rule implementation is likely to occur, which may shift business overseas as the cost of doing business in the United States increases and create other opportunities for regulatory arbitrage," Sommers said. Stephen O'Connor, chairman of the International Swaps and Derivatives Association, also said the effort could hinder the competitiveness of U.S. banks.

U.S.-based swaps-data repositories are required under the Dodd-Frank Act to obtain indemnification agreements from regulators in other countries before sharing market data. The provision could undermine efforts to bolster transparency and reduce risks in the over-the-counter derivatives market.

U.S. regulators are striving to expand their jurisdiction and subject foreign governments to tougher regulation when they engage in certain U.S. financial transactions, such as swaps. Government-backed foreign institutions are rejecting the prospect, arguing that the U.S. is overstepping. "It would be inappropriate to be subject to supervisory requirements by a non-EU authority," the European Central Bank wrote to U.S. regulators. "We are concerned that external control of our activities might not be sufficiently sensitive to the practice of managing foreign reserves and could thus frustrate the ECB's performance of the mandate that it has been given."